IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING IN INDIA-Dr Manish Kumar Yadav and Dr Rajesh Kumar.pdf
In the last couple of decades, there have been extensive debates over the existence of global warming, today, the debate is largely over and a consensus has emerged in the global scientific community that Global Climate Change is occurring and that it will have a dramatic and adverse impact on the planet earth’s ecosystem. According to a report for the World Bank, by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) a German government-funded institute: the increase in earth’s temperature could result in a sea-level rise of 0.5 to 1 meter with higher levels also possible, by the year 2100 AD, affecting some of the most densely populated and vulnerable coastal cities and mega polis’s located in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Madagascar, Mexico, Mozambique, Philippines, the USA, and Vietnam as well as small Island Nations all over the world especially in South Pacific like Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Federated States of Nauru, Palau, Samoa and Solomon Islands. India also has been identified as one amongst the 27 countries that are most vulnerable to sea level rise caused by global warming.
With global warming, the Glaciers are melting on all the six continents as well as in the Arctic Circle and these once majestic glacial mass which used to stretch to the edge of cities like La Paz and El Alto now end up high in the mountains. If present warming trends continue, all glaciers in the Glacier National Park could be gone by 2030 AD. Over the next 100 years, climate change is expected to accelerate and contribute to major ecological, physical, social, and economic changes, many of which have already begun.
No one knows how long our planet can sustain and take on this onslaught, what we do know for sure is that climate change especially due to increasing levels of Green House Gases is already harming the fragile ecosystems and humankind all over the world. Its reality can be seen in the melting glaciers, disintegrating polar ice caps, thawing permafrost, changing monsoon patterns, rising sea levels, and fatal heat waves. Scientists are not the only ones talking about El Nino and La Nina which cause global changes in both temperatures and rainfall, it’s also been discussed at length now by Academia, Civil Societies, and Political Leadership, all over the world.
From the apple growers in the orchards of Himachal Pradesh to the farmers in the drought-prone region of Vidharbha and those living on the disappearing islands of Sunder bans Delta a sprawling archipelago, with a core area of 10,000 square kilometres straddling between the Indian state of West Bengal and Bangladesh are already struggling with the impacts of climate change.
India has been involved in constructive engagements on Climate Change and Sustainable Development since the inception of United Nations Environment Programme in 1972, through Rio Declaration‑Earth Summit 1992, Kyoto Protocol‑1997, Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development‑2002, Copenhagen and the Paris Accord of 2009 and 2016 respectively within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). India is also a party to five major international conventions like the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization-World Heritage Committee (UNESCO-WHC) etc.
